complete the circle

30512 we woke up early, hoped on a minibus to head over to Teresienstadt, and Lidice, which were a ghetto, and concentration camp during World War II. but first we stopped at a cemetery, and the crematorium which was used to dispose of the bodies from the camp. the cemetery area is split up, the city cemetery, which is in active use, the memorial to the Soviets who died liberating Czechoslovakia, and finally the largest area, the mass grave for the victims of the holocaust. the crematorium which we wandered through was rather unimpressive considering the number of bodies that went through it. after this we went into the city-fort proper, the city had existed for a number of years before it was converted into a classic 18th century star fortress, named Terezín after Maria Theresa (who also appears previously in this blog). the city was pretty cool, though it felt a bit empty, i mean, it was turned into a Jewish ghetto by the SS after the Nazis rolled into Czechoslovakia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terez%C3%ADn_concentration_camp ), so not surprisingly the population was devastated, but then some ten years ago it suffered a pretty nasty flood, driving the people out once again. the guide that walked us through all this stuff was very knowledgeable, and had second hand accounts (first hand to her) of people who lived through the ghetto here, and the Lidice bit which will come up later. the guide told us about how the SS put on a show for the Red Cross that came through to inspect these Jewish resettlement camps, the SS did such a good job, that the Red Cross deemed it a happy place, and that there is clearly nothing fishy going on with the disappearance of millions of Jews...in 1944. the place had an old Austro-Hungarian barrack, turned holding pen for Jewish families, turned musuem that was pretty interesting. the section that i liked the most was the art, visual art produced by the inmates? victims? prisoners? people in the ghetto. my favorite being Bedřich Fritta ( https://www.google.cz/search?q=Bed%C5%99ich+Fritta&hl=cs&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=w3p&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=g3nGT8HfDcTC0QXI8NT3BQ&ved=0CFoQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=704 ). he was a caricaturist prior to his internment, and then he was put to work making propaganda, and he did more satire in his free time. we then wandered into the little fortress, where we learned that the entire city was turned into a fort because it seemed to serve as a good defensive position against the Prussians, cause you know, they were rather aggressive, and the Czech lands were right there, the little fortress was the garrison when it was a fort. The town in total was built for 7000 people including the garrison. In the 1940s the whole city was turned into a Jewish ghetto, housing at the most 58000 people. The forttown was chosen because it could easily be converted to a ghetto, also it was near appropriate railways to get the supplies in and the people out to the death camps up in Poland and Eastern Germany. at the small fortress was used as a prison for Czech prisoners, political dissidents, intellectuals, and homosexuals, generally unsavory characters like that, and an SS barracks. At one point the prison housed 1500 prisoners. as cool as all this WWII and holocaust stuff is, i was honestly more excited by the fact that cell 1 of this little fortress housed Gavrilo Princip. I dont mean to belittle the tragedies visited upon the people of the ghetto, or the other prisoners of the fortress, or the massacre at Lidice (which again, ill get to in a second), but the fact that the man that put much of the violence of the 20th century into motion was housed here is really cool. I have been to the place where he shot Franz Ferdinand, ive seen the car Ferdinand was riding in, the now bloody jacket he was wearing, as well as the pistol that shot him. so this kind of completed the circle for me, Princip was held here till his death as he was too young to be executed.

we then watched a film which was a mashup of real footage from Terezín before the war, the reality of the ghetto, and the German made propaganda, it was neat seeing all of it side by side, and to top it off, we viewed the film sitting the theater that was used to entertain the SS guards. Lidice Nazi reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich ). he rolled into Czechoslovakia in September of 41, as the Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, immediately quashed any Czech resistance, as ordered to do so by Hitler, within his first month, over 1500 Czechs were arrested. He was infact one of the chief architects of the Final Solution. The Czech government in exile hatches the plan to assassinate said Heydrich ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anthropoid ), dropping Czech soldiers into the region, with poor results. Finally in December, they dropped 2 catz in, they met up with the what elements of the local resistance that still around. They planned to kill him in his car on his way to airport to Berlin. They hit him, almost botched the job what with one of their operatives' Sten gun failing, but they wounded him with an AT grenade, which ultimately led to his death. Reprisals kicked in, rumors flew as to what the Nazis were gunna do. Hitler calls for the death of 10000 Czechs, ultimately they settled on completely eliminating this town of Lidice, because there was some thin strand of connection(according to our guide an unconnected letter from lover to lover) between the operative which killed Heydrich and the city. All men over 16 were lined up and shot, all the women went to a concentration camp, and a few of the children were chosen as good Aryan stock, the rest were shipped off to other concentration camps. now all that survives of the city is a large park with the foundation of the town church trace out in stones, along with a memorial to all the children killed during the massacre. the museum to Lidice was very well done, with various bits of archival and documentary footage, it was another one of those experiences that conveys wholly the experience and feelings, without beating the hell out of you emotionally. the whole day didnt lend itself to picture taking too much, hence the lack there of. we are visiting a Communist work camp tomorrow, i will likely have more to say regarding my "feelings" and "reflections" with the contrasting bit tomorrow, and after some of this has sunk in a little deeper. until then enjoy the wiki links.